Matt Brandt
Whoever you are, you didn't necessarily start out working for Cheiron. You could have been hired by Barthes Prosthetics, or Allegra Pharmaceuticals, or Jones-Klein-Beauchamp and its subsidiaries, or Weide, or any of a dozen or more other companies. You thought you were taken on by a company making X-ray machines, asthma inhalers or fizzy drinks. You were in for a shock. Skills and Abilities Thaumatechnology In the cold, sterile labs of the Cheiron Group, men are made into monsters for the greater good of humanity. Other hunter organizations might carry bizarre mystical artifacts or learn blasphemous rites of arcane power, but the Cheiron Group's agents actually take parts of monsters and put them inside their own bodies. Thaumatechnology Endowments are the most invasive category of Endowments, and while TCG's field recovery teams might appreciate the little edges these biomedical horrors give them, few are entirely comfortable with the concept of grafting bits of unnatural creatures to their own flesh. Below are Matt's surgical implants. Anger Patch: The Anger Patch is a small patch of a dead man's skin grafted to the base of the neck. One inch square, precisely measured, the patch is wired with twice the number of nerve endings that area of the body usually has. It's hooked directly into the bloodstream, too, and it feeds from your blood all day and all night and it does one thing in return: It hates. The Anger Patch isn't just a square of a dead man's skin, it's a square of a vampire's skin. Vampires, as Cheiron scientists have observed, exhibit an instinctual territorial aggression on a scale unprecedented in nature, and with a little biomedical tinkering, the boys in the back room have fi gured out how to harness that. Basically, when the user looks at a vampire, this patch of flesh will writhe and itch under his skin, allowing him to identify vampires at a glance. Quick Step: The Cheiron Group expects nothing less than success from its field agents. The Group's continued research success relies on monsters being brought in alive (well, intact, at any rate) for study and harvest. But science is a pragmatic study, and the Cheiron board of directors knows that sometimes you just have to get the hell away and live to fight again. To that end, they developed the Quick-Step. Half-manufactured, half-grown from the ligaments of swiftly running monsters (werewolves, some vampires, certain demonic entities), Quick-Steps give even an ordinary man the ability to shatter Olympic records. It might even be enough to let him get away from the things in the shadows. Agonizer: A small, roach-like creature is implanted in the user's forearm, wired up via a nerve-like thread to their brain. This insect, when activated with a flick of the wrist, causes two long fibers to shoot out of the user's wrist, which absorbs magic in the vicinity, or, if a magic-user is touched by the fiber, it will literally eat ''the magic inside of them. This is extremely painful for the target. '''Hand of Glory:' Limb transplant technology has come a long way in the last 40 years. It used to be the best you could hope for was a plastic model, like a mannequin's hand. Nowadays, provided you're willing to go on a cocktail of immunosuppressants for the rest of your life, they can actually hack the hand off a cadaver and attach it to you almost as good as new. The Cheiron Group has been at the forefront of limb-replacement research for two decades, and with the aid of Thaumatechnology had recorded successes five years before mainstream medical technology. Then the boys in the back room got hold of a peculiar little relic a field team brought back from a raid on a demon-worshiping cult in southern France: A pickled human hand, severed at the wrist, with each fi nger a tiny candle. When the candle was lit, anyone who saw its light was transfixed, unable to move or speak. In one of those serendipitous moments that make the world go round, the scientists of the Cheiron Group saw a way to kill two birds with one proverbial stone. A Hand of Glory must be affixed to the stump of a human being's arm. Occult tradition dictates that it must be a left hand specifically, but Cheiron Group surgeons have had equal success in transplanting either hand. What is important is that the hand come from a hanged man or woman and be at least partially pickled in a solution of bizarre alchemical reagents. By all rights, it should be impossible to graft such thoroughly necrotized flesh onto a living being without massive infection and death, but something in the nature of the Thaumatechnology allows the grafted limb to function normally. It's always a few degrees cooler than the rest of the body, and the skin is perpetually wrinkled as though it has soaked in a bath, but it is otherwise indistinguishable from a normal hand. Regenerative Nodule: As good as the Cheiron Group's doctors are, they aren't even close to the recuperative abilities of some of the monsters they track down. Werewolves in particular are obscenely fast healers -- so fast, in fact, that sometimes their bodies overcompensate and form little cysts that Cheiron Group medics have termed "regenerative nodules." As far as the wolves know, they're harmless, but Cheiron got hold of a few through some very questionable means, and now the boys in the back room have figured out how to harness the things' potential and turn it loose on the human body. A Regenerative Nodule looks like a rubbery lump of scar tissue the size of a golf ball. Before they put it in you, Cheiron scientists put a little plastic shunt into the core of the nodule -- a tricky proposition since the incision heals over almost instantly. When it's sewn into the lining of your gut, it's almost invisible, even though you can still feel the lump. Give that lump a press, and the shunt puckers open and dumps into your system pure... well, whatever the hell makes werewolves heal so fast. Devil's Eyes: It's amazing the things they can do with the human eye. Corneal transplants can repair traumatic damage to the surface of the eye, neurosurgeons can connect cameras directly into the optic nerve, and laser surgery can give you perfect 20/20 vision -- and the Cheiron Group can give you the eyes of a demon that see the deepest secrets of a man's soul. Transplantation of the entire eyeball is a new field for Cheiron doctors, and Devil's Eyes are one of the early prototypes. Before the implantation, Devil's Eyes resemble golden, multifaceted orbs, like oversized insect eyes. Once they've been implanted and hooked up to a person's optic nerves, they shift their pigmentation and structure, becoming indistinguishable from the patient's natural eyes. No matter how bad the character's eyes were originally, Devil's Eyes give him perfect 20/20 vision. Devil's Eyes aren't really "eyes" in any biological sense; while they are the sensory organs of the creature they come from, they don't really perceive the world the way a human's eyes do. To allow a person to see through the Devil's Eyes, a tiny computerized interface chip must be implanted between the optic nerve and the Eye themselves. The interface processes the visual information out of the image perceived by the Eyes, filtering out extraneous data beyond the human visual range. Personality Matt is, well... a fairly average joe. He eats, he sleeps, he plays video games and watches TV in his free time, and he goes to work. However, his work leads him to be a tad bit... off. One needs to be when working as a Field Retrival Agent for Cheiron Group. But that does not, by any means, mean Matt likes his job. Who likes any job, for that matter? Well, he sees it as a good source of income. It landed him a nice condo in the North District of Town, which is nice. In the field, Matt is rather cold and apathetic, wanting to do no more than just clock in, do his job, and clock out. It doesn't mean he isn't a hard worker. He is. But it's only to make the day go by faster. When faced with danger, he keeps that apathetic, uncaring attitude for the most part. A vampire or werewolf trying to rip his throat out with their teeth is just another day at work, for him. He does get nightmares about it, though. On his off days, Matt usually stays in. As a germaphobe, he find the outdoors to be, well, disgusting. That's why he wears the latex gloves all the time, you see? But anyways, he enjoys his hobbies. Video games and reality television, mostly. On the rare occassion he does go out, it's usually just to go shopping. He doesn't have friends to speak of, probably due to his boring nature, or highly secretive job, so he usually just keeps to himself. History Matt left the Marines some years ago, only to find that his only communicable skill was the ability to shoot people and pop eyeballs out with his thumbs. Cheiron hired him as a "cleaner," a man who tidies up messy situations: He didn't like it, but didn't feel he had a choice at the time. Now the only choice he has is whether he has nightmares about being in Iraq or nightmares about the monsters. He was a cleaner, too. An actual cleaner. With a mop. A clerical error led to him (instead of someone with a name with one letter different) getting transferred to Field Projects, and he had the surgery before he figured out what was happening and they realized their mistake. Too late now. Matt have parts of monsters inside him, a gun he doesn't know how to use and a handbook that's worse than useless. He was in trouble. But, hard work and a good work ethic does wonders in the corporate field. It took a few years, but Matt climbed the ladder a bit, getting quite a few raises, and subsequently more Thaumatechnological implants. He didn't like that part, but hey, the job pays really well, and they take care of him through medical insurance and other coverages. They've even got dental! Relationship Guide Edel Kina - Enemy Carmilla Karnstein - Enemy Category:Characters Category:Human